TBR News March 11, 2012
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C., March 11, 2012: “Israeli attempts to force the United States to launch an attack on Iran have not done well. They dangled the idea of :unlimited Jewish-American support” for Obama’s reelection campaign but the growing slaughters in Syria are sidetracking their frenzied efforts to get this country to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. The Russians have been selling enormous amounts of certain types of weaponry to Syria, weapons which are then trans-shipped to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and paid for, not by Syria but by anti-Israeli elements outside Lebanon. If Hezbollah were to launch a flood of long-range missiles against Israel, there would be terrible damage resulting and Iran’s possible nuclear development thesis would die a natural death. One serious problem with constantly threatening Iran with imminent attack is that the Iranians might opt for a pre-emptive strike, something that the arrogant Israelis do not seem to have addressed. The entire eastern end of the Mediterranean is like a dry hayfield in a lightening storm. It could catch fire at any time. We know how wars start but we never know how they end.”
Sixteen Afghan civilians killed in rogue U.S. attack
March 11, 2012
by Ahmad Nadem and Ahmad Haroon
Reuters
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan- Sixteen Afghan civilians, including nine children, were shot dead in what witnesses described as a nighttime massacre on Sunday near a U.S. base in southern Afghanistan, and one U.S. soldier was in custody.
While U.S. officials rushed to draw a line between the rogue shooting and the ongoing efforts of a U.S. force of around 90,000, the incident is sure to further inflame Afghan anger triggered when U.S. soldiers burned copies of the Koran at a NATO base.
U.S. officials said an American staff sergeant from a unit based in Washington state was in custody after the attack on villagers in three houses. Multiple civilians were also wounded, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition said
President Barack Obama called his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai promising to establish the facts quickly and “to hold fully accountable anyone responsible.”
There were conflicting reports of how many shooters were involved, with U.S. officials asserting that a lone soldier was responsible, in contrast to witnesses’ accounts that several U.S. soldiers were present.
The incident was one of the worst of its kind since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said anti-U.S. reprisals were possible following the killings, just as the Koran burning incident a few weeks earlier had touched off widespread anti-Western protests in which at least 30 people died.
Neighbors and relatives of the dead said they had seen a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district at about 2 a.m., enter homes and open fire.
An Afghan man who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies.
Obama said he was deeply saddened. “This incident is tragic and shocking and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan,” Obama said in a statement.
“INTENTIONAL MURDERS”
Afghan President Karzai condemned the rampage as “intentional murders” and demanded an explanation from the United States. His office said the dead included nine children and three women.
Afghan officials also gave varying accounts of the number of shooters involved. Karzai’s office released a statement quoting a villager as saying “American soldiers woke my family up and shot them in the face.”
Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid said a U.S. soldier had burst into three homes near his base in the middle of the night, killing a total of 16 people including 11 people in the first house.
The ISAF spokesman said the U.S. soldier “walked back to the base and turned himself into U.S. forces this morning,” adding there had been no military operations taking place in the area when the incident occurred.
Panjwayi district is about 35 km (22 miles) west of the provincial capital Kandahar city. The district is considered the spiritual home of the Taliban and has been a hive of insurgent activity in recent years.
“I saw that all 11 of my relatives were killed, including my children and grandchildren,” said a weeping Haji Samad, who said he had left his home a day earlier.
BLOOD-SPATTERED WALLS
The walls of the house were blood-splattered.
“They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them,” Samad told Reuters at the scene.
Neighbors said they had awoken to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, who they described as laughing and drunk.
“They were all drunk and shooting all over the place,” said neighbor Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where killings took place.
“Their (the victims’) bodies were riddled with bullets.”
A senior U.S. defense official in Washington rejected witness accounts that several apparently drunk soldiers were involved. “Based on the preliminary information we have this account is flatly wrong,” the official said. “We believe one U.S. service member acted alone, not a group of U.S. soldiers.”
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Karzai to offer his condolences. “I condemn such violence and am shocked and saddened that a U.S. service member is alleged to be involved, clearly acting outside his chain of command,” Panetta said in a statement. “A full investigation is already under way. A suspect is in custody and I gave President Karzai my assurances that we will bring those responsible to justice.”
The Afghan Taliban said it would take revenge for the deaths, in an emailed statement to media.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said an investigation was under way and that “the individual or individuals responsible for this act will be identified and brought to justice.”
ISAF Commander General John Allen promised a rapid investigation.
Civilian casualties have been a major source of friction between Karzai’s Western-backed government and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan. NATO is preparing to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghans and all foreign combat troops are scheduled to leave by end-2014.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance remained firmly committed to its mission and said anyone responsible would be held accountable.
The Koran burning and the violence that followed, including a spate of deadly attacks against U.S. soldiers, underscored the challenges that the West faces as it prepares to withdraw.
Sunday’s attack may harden a growing consensus in Washington that, despite a troop surge, a war bill exceeding $500 billion over 10-1/2 years and almost 2,000 U.S. lives lost, prospects are dimming for what the United States can accomplish in Afghanistan.
“These killings only serve to reinforce the mindset that the whole war is broken and that there’s little we can do about it beyond trying to cut our losses and leave,” said Joshua Foust, a security expert with the American Security Project.
(Reporting by Ahmad Nadem in Kandahar and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul, Additional reporting by Missy Ryan and Alister Bull in Washington; Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Andrew Roche and Jackie Frank)
Russian protesters face challenge after Putin win
March 11, 2012
by Steve Gutterman
Reuters
MOSCOW – Russian opposition leaders on Sunday called for a clear agenda and a grassroots focus on local elections to re-energize a protest movement running out of steam after Vladimir Putin convincingly won a six-year presidential term.
After the crowd at a rally in central Moscow on Saturday fell well short of expectations, activists who have mounted the biggest protests of Putin’s 12-year rule said supporters should dig in for a long fight for political change.
“Remember, friends: We are running a marathon,” one opposition leader, Ilya Yashin, said in his blog. “Sometimes it’s necessary to increase the pace and sometimes to slow down so that you have enough breath to last to the finish.”
Demonstrators on Saturday chanted “Russia without Putin!” beneath the bulk of Soviet-era office towers on one of Moscow’s main avenues. Organizers put the crowd size at 25,000, police said it was 10,000.
By either account, that was far fewer than turned out three months ago to express their outrage over suspicions of fraud in a December 4 parliamentary election and dismay at Putin’s intention to rule for years to come.
The December 10 rallies in Moscow and other cities were followed by bigger demonstrations on December 24 and February 4, the largest opposition protests since Putin, president from 2000 to 2008 and prime minister since then, came to power.
But Putin’s victory in the March 4 presidential vote has taken the wind out of protesters’ calls for a “Russia without Putin” and their demands for a rerun of both elections, which Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev have rejected.
While protest leaders dismiss Putin’s portrayal of the opposition as a divided and amorphous group of critics with few constructive ideas, activists suggested it was now critical for the protest movement to mix firm demands on Putin’s government with a clear agenda of its own.
‘FIVE MINUTES OF HATE’
“The next demonstration must not be ‘against’ but ‘for’,” Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition lawmaker, said in a blog on Sunday. “We need to move away from the format of ‘five minutes of hate’ and announce a plan of action, answer the question ‘What next?’ and demand the authorities conduct reforms.”
Opponents hoped Putin would win less than half the vote on March 4 – forcing a runoff, eroding his aura of invincibility and setting the stage for a new series of protests.
But Putin won the presidency outright with nearly 64 percent by the official count, enough to let him claim majority support despite allegations of fraud and criticism by international observers who said he had an unfair advantage.
With no national election due until 2016, some opposition leaders said activists must work to make sure local and regional elections are run fairly as part of a strategy of seeking change from the ground up in a country with a history of top-down rule.
In a move to placate protesters, Putin and outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev have promised to restore popular elections of the governors of Russia’s 83 regions. But Kremlin critics fear legislation now in parliament may give the president a say in who gets to run.
Opposition leaders hope Kremlin plans to enlarge the city of Moscow will lead to a new election for its legislature. Leonid Parfyonov, a prominent journalist and protest organizer, said such a vote would be “the next step in political life” and that change could originate in Moscow, where Putin’s support is weak.
“We need to prepare for various elections – local votes, mayoral elections in Moscow and governor’s elections – primarily to make sure they take place,” opposition politician and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov told Interfax news agency in remarks posted on his website on Sunday.
Nemtsov and Gudkov said the opposition should not try to hold frequent protests.
“So as not to tire people out with frequent demonstrations, we have decided to take a pause – to wait until May and hold a mass action at which we will make new demands,” Gudkov said.
In contrast to previous rallies, opposition leaders set no date on Saturday for the next big protest. But a consensus seems to be emerging that it should be held shortly before Putin’s inauguration on May 7 – and that it must be big.
One prominent activist, Sergei Udaltsov, called on Saturday for a 1 million-strong protest in Moscow on May 1.
MILLION IN MOSCOW?
At about 10 times the size of the biggest protest this winter, that goal is a huge stretch. But Nemtsov agreed that “to demonstrate jointly and clearly ahead of the presidential inauguration would be very good”.
After a hiatus of nearly two months, such a plan would be major test of what Russians call the “protest mood”.
The winter protests evoked the heady days when the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an end to decades of oppressive Communist rule, but much of that euphoria has faded.
“I’m afraid the protest movement will ebb but we have no other tools to influence those in power – only protests,” Yegor Sukhanov, 37, said at Saturday’s protest, holding a cardboard sign that read: “Putin, leave!”
No clear figure has emerged to lead the disparate opposition groups and activists behind the protests. In a country with a history of authoritarian one-man rule, the sense of collective leadership is a draw for some, particularly in a movement trying to counter propaganda that portrays Putin as indispensable.
But for Darya Ponomaryova, a 17-year-old student at Saturday’s protest, the need for a unifying leader is urgent.
“The opposition must keep unnerving the authorities for now, but there is no doubt that after a few months things must change” she said.
“A clear program is needed, new candidates are needed who represent the street. We need one clear leader for our support to continue.”
(Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly and Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Passion vs puritanism as America is gripped by a war over sexuality
US politics is overshadowed by bitter debates over sexual politics, from abortion to contraception and personal morality. But it is not just rightwingers who fear the increasing sexualisation of society
March 10, 2012
by Paul Harris in New York
Dr Marty Klein pulled no punches when it came to what he thought of the ferocious debate in America over contraception. As the nation’s political classes veer between condemning government funding for birth control and defending it as a basic women’s right, the California sex therapist and author of America’s War on Sex bluntly said his country was on a perilous path.
“America has entered a new dark age where people are proud of their ignorance,” he told the Observer. “The US is careering towards a society that is reshaping women’s reproductive rights. It used to be abortion. Now it’s contraception. How can contraception be a battleground? It is crazy.”
That might be so, but the spat is white hot and part of a much larger argument. Only last week protests broke out in Texas, Arizona, Utah, Georgia and Alabama that all involved some aspects of sex and sexuality. In Utah, it was over the passing of a law that means the only sex education children will get in school will be about abstinence. In Texas, it was about cuts to health insurance that covers birth control. In Georgia, eight of the nine women in the state senate walked out over a bill that attacked abortion rights.
Barely a day has gone by in recent weeks without some fresh fight breaking out over sexual politics. The most fierce was over radio shock jock Rush Limbaugh‘s comments on Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, who had testified in Congress on the importance of government mandated funding for birth control. Limbaugh told millions of conservative listeners that this made Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute”.
He said: “If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.” The comments sparked outrage, triggered an advertiser boycott of Limbaugh’s show and dragged in all the Republican nomination candidates and Barack Obama.
Limbaugh apologised, but many liberals saw it as a sign of the powerful forces on the right determined to undo decades of advancement in sex and women’s rights. Few people symbolise that more than former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who is now the main challenger to Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination.
A devout Catholic and hardened culture warrior, Santorum is a hero to conservatives for his hardline views on abortion and contraception. For Nancy Cohen, author of the current hit book Delirium: How the Sexual Counter-Revolution is Polarising America, Santorum’s rise is the inevitable result of decades of backlash against 1960s sexual liberation. “It is insanity to be having this conversation in our politics when you are a world power. The rest of the world is watching with their jaws agape,” she said.
But the image of America gripped by a fervent new puritanism is not the full picture. Any survey of the wider cultural landscape reveals sex has never been more prevalent in American life. On television and in movies sex is everywhere.
Reality shows like The Jersey Shore show their cast members coupling with each other and random strangers. Stars such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, built lucrative businesses on the back of sex tapes. Gossip websites debate the sex lives of celebrities with a prurient detail that would shock even the most infamous of scandal rags from Hollywood in the 1930s, and they do it for an audience online of millions.
Sex sells like never before, even for the most tangential of products. In sport there is even a Lingerie Football League, whose female players done skimpy outfits and teams have names like the Los Angeles Temptation.
The American sex industry is said to be worth more than $12bn a year. Recent regulations in California aimed at ensuring all porn actors have to use condoms saw protests that such a law would see the industry relocate, with a resultant loss of jobs and taxes. At the same time porn actor James Deen has been cast as the lead in a new Hollywood film The Canyons. Deen has now become such a popular porn star – especially with young women – that he was the subject of a segment on ABC’s headline news show Nightline.
In fact, sexual freedom in America has gone so far that conservatives are not the only ones wringing their hands. The sexualisation of young girls – such as Bratz dolls with their bee-stung lips and short skirts – has outraged liberals and feminists, as has the growth of a casual “hook up” culture on American college campuses. Even Klein admits that – sexually speaking – Americans have never been so inventive. “The range of things that people do in their bedrooms is without doubt getting broader and the entertainment options around sex are also broader,” he said. But how to explain such vibrant sexual freedoms alongside such a widespread backlash? “Two words: mental illness!” joked Klein. “When people ask me is America getting more progressive sexually or is it getting more conservative, I just answer: ‘Yes’.”
Cohen has a thesis. In her book she describes a “shadow movement” that has aggressively campaigned to set back women’s rights, focused on issues around sex and birth control. It is, she says, largely motivated by religion. That gives it a powerful motivation and it has developed sophisticated techniques to influence mainstream politics, especially via the social-conservative wing of the Republican party. Klein believes it gives the movement power far beyond its numbers and a louder voice than a more silent majority. “These people are brilliant political organisers. They are ideologues and crusaders. They believe if they lose, civilisation hangs in the balance,” he said.
Unique factors in American history also help to explain the situation. Religion continues to play a big role in public life, which stands in stark contrast to many European countries. About 43% of Americans regularly go to church and it is hard to have a political career in the US without professing a deep faith. The power of religion provides a ready-made vehicle for campaigning on sexual mores. It also means sex is the one part of life where the normal rules of the free market are given a willful pass. “The only place in life in America where more freedom of choice is seen as bad is sex,” said Klein.
Many commentators say the hardline Protestantism of 17th-century settlers casts a long shadow over modern sexuality, leading to a distrust of sexual behaviour as pleasure and seeing it as a religious duty for reproduction. Certainly Santorum’s pronouncements on the evil of contraception fit this narrative. Despite his Catholicism, Santorum is a huge hit with the evangelicals. But others say the Puritans have been misjudged by history.
“There is evidence they understood and celebrated sex within certain confines, like marriage,” said Professor Thomas Foster, a cultural history expert at the Catholic DePaul University in Chicago. “Puritans talk about the clitoris. My classes are always amazed when they hear about that,” he added.
Another theory is that American ideas about public and private morality are rooted in the nations’ founding fathers. Whereas in France and Italy, there is little link seen between a politician’s private life and political behaviour, in America the reverse is true. “There was a sense with the founding fathers that the person who is virtuous in their private life is able to be virtuous in their public life,” Foster said. Thus Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern nearly destroyed his presidency.
A final theory holds that, because America was founded as a revolutionary experiment against the autocracies of Europe, it has a very different sense of “modernism”. While European countries have organically evolved social mores over centuries, America has always been in turmoil at the previous generation’s social behaviour because such fights are locked into the nation’s sense of self-invention. In this view, the current battle over contraception is simply yet another part of the American experience.
“These debates are old. They are as old as the first colonies,” said Foster. Or to put it another way, the only thing more American than having sex is arguing about it.
• What’s your take on the so-called sexual counter-revolution? Is there a war on women? We want to hear your thoughts. Join our People’s Panel and share your perspective
THE LAWMAKERS’ BATTLEGROUND
There have been numerous clashes in the US over reproductive rights that many liberals have called a “war on women”:
■ The “Blunt amendment” was a failed attempt by Republicans to allow firms with moral objections to opt out of providing healthcare covering birth control.
■ The state senate in Virginia has passed a law requiring a woman to have an ultrasound before having an abortion. Originally the law had also mandated a vaginal probe aimed at detecting a heartbeat in the foetus.
■ In Utah politicians have passed a local law that bans sex education that mentions homosexuality, birth control techniques and any discussion of sex outside marriage. Instead schools will be required to give sex education on the grounds of “abstinence only” or they can not mention the subject at all.
■ In Texas, governor Rick Perry has cut planned parenthood out of the state’s women’s health programme. The move could trigger the federal government to axe 90% of funds, threatening a service which provides breast cancer screenings and birth control advice.
US report: China’s cyberwar skills a risk to military
March 8. 2012
BBC News
China’s cyber warfare skills could pose a threat to the United States military in a conflict, said a report.
The report was released by a congressional panel, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
It said China’s military had focused increasingly on “information confrontation”.
It also highlighted China’s development of cyber tools and links to large telecommunications firms.
The 136-page report, prepared for the US Congress by defence contractor Northrop Grumman, said that Chinese commercial firms – some with foreign partners – were providing the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with advanced technology and research.
The PLA had ”embraced the idea that successful war-fighting is based on the ability to exert control over an adversary’s information and information systems”, the report said.
Using the scenario of a US defence of Taiwan as an example, the report said that China could hit US systems with “electronic countermeasures weapons and network attack and exploitation tools”.
The report also warned that the difficulty in identifying the party behind any cyber attack could delay the US response.
“Computer network operations (attack, defence and exploitation) have become fundamental to the PLA’s strategic campaign goals for seizing information dominance early and using it to enable and support other PLA operations throughout a conflict,” it concluded.
This report was a follow-up to a previous report that Northrop Grumman completed for the commission in 2009.
That report had warned that China was possibly carrying out ”a long-term, sophisticated, computer network exploitation campaign” against the US.
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, created in 2000, is tasked with reporting on the national security implications of trade ties with China.
Bomb-Iran week turns ‘Syrious’
March 10, 2012
by Jim Lobe
Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON – This past week was supposed to be all about Iran – at least, that’s how Israel and its powerful US lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had planned it – and why the US should prepare to bomb it very, very soon if its leadership doesn’t cave into Western demands to abandon its nuclear program.
By week’s end, however, the most urgent foreign policy issue with which US policymakers and their media camp followers were grappling was whether to bomb Syria first instead.
Remarkably, the sudden deviation was triggered by Tuesday’s dramatic call on the floor of the senate by Republican Senator John McCain for the US to provide decisive support to rebels battling to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
“The only realistic way to do so is with foreign air power,” declared McCain, whose strategy was swiftly endorsed by his two hawkish fellow-travellers, Republican Senator Lindsay Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.
“The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centres in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces,” he declared, touching off a vigorous new debate that radiated from the Capitol to the Pentagon and the White House about how deeply and how violently to become involved in yet another predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern country.
While Defence Secretary Leon Panetta rejected McCain’s proposal, the administration appears to be moving closer to providing some forms of “non-lethal” equipment to the opposition by week’s end.
What was most remarkable about the move by the “Three Amigos”, as they are sometimes called in part, was its timing.
It came just as some 13,000 activists, energized by three days of juicy anti-Iran red meat dished out by everyone from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the top three Republican presidential candidates, as well as the Republican and Democratic leadership of both houses of congress, were being bussed from AIPAC’s annual extravaganza at the Washington Convention Centre to Capitol Hill.
The mission was to persuade their elected representatives that the spinning by the mullahs of even one centrifuge to enrich uranium on Iranian soil posed an “existential” threat to Israel, if not quite yet to the US itself, and was hence “unacceptable”.
Indeed, every conference delegate received a folder filled with detailed talking points topped by a slick, four-page coloured pamphlet with grim photos of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Leader Ali Khamenei, and a missile, complete with launch pad, entitled “Iranian Nuclear Weapons Capability: UNACCEPTABLE.”
No talking points on Syria at all were included. In fact, out of the literally scores of breakout briefing sessions that ran continuously between plenary sessions during the AIPAC conference, only one dealt directly with Syria.
That’s why the abrupt change of subject by the Three Amigos, all staunch advocates of Israel and great admirers of Netanyahu (whom McCain and Graham had just met the week before in Jerusalem after which they publicly deplored President Barack Obama’s failure to align US policy toward Tehran with their host’s), was so perplexing.
“It was incredibly poor timing by McCain to call for bombing Syria,” observed Heather Hurlburt, the executive director of the National Security Network (NSN), a foreign policy think tank close to the Obama administration. “I don’t know what it looks like to call for bombing Syria the same week you’re calling for bombing Iran.”
Of course, there is a connection, and neo-conservatives (whose views are most reliably represented in the senate by the Three Amigos) have worked increasingly assiduously at establishing it in the public mind as Syria has slowly slid toward civil war over the past year.
The Assad regime, they never cease to point out, has been Tehran’s closest and sometimes only ally in the Arab world, and its ouster would constitute a serious setback not only to its regional reach and influence, but also to another of Israel’s most dangerous foes, Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
“The end of the Assad regime would sever Hezbollah’s lifeline to Iran, eliminate a longstanding threat to Israel, bolster Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence, and inflict a strategic defeat on the Iranian regime,” McCain argued. “It would be a geopolitical success of the first order.”
In that respect, he and the neo-conservatives have argued, US military intervention in Syria would be “very different” from last year’s intervention in Libya, which the Three Amigos also strongly supported.
In addition to the moral and humanitarian concerns on which Washington, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and allied powers justified their intervention against Muammar Gaddafi, military action against Assad would also serve US “strategic and geopolitical interests”, McCain asserted.
McCain’s argument partly echoed a much-noted New York Times op-ed by a former director of Israel’s Mossad, Efrain Halevy, who, significantly, has been one of the main figures in that country’s national security establishment who has publicly questioned the wisdom of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Entitled “Iran’s Achilles Heel”, the article argued that Iran’s eviction from Syria would “visibly dent its domestic and international prestige, possibly forcing a haemorrhaging regime in Tehran to suspend its nuclear policies. This would be a safer and more rewarding option than the military one.”
Unlike McCain, however, Halevy did not recommend direct military intervention in Syria, suggesting instead that Assad would go the minute that Russia, Assad’s main arms supplier and diplomatic protector, was persuaded to drop its support, a strategy that the Obama administration appears to be pursuing.
Although individual members have occasionally spoken hopefully about Assad’s demise, Netanyahu’s government has mostly kept a discreet silence on Syria. This reflects, among other things, concerns that chaos and civil war in such a heavily armed state, the possible ascendance by the Muslim Brotherhood or more radical Islamist forces, or both, could prove more threatening than continued rule by the Assad dynasty, which, despite its support for Hezbollah, has kept its common border with Israel quiet for almost 40 years.
It has been far more comfortable focusing international attention on Iran’s nuclear programme and the necessity for the US to take military action to stop it or to at least give Israel the wherewithal to do the deed. That was supposed to be the message coming out of the AIPAC conference and amplified by friendly Republican presidential candidates this week.
But for US neo-conservatives, who generally feel they know better than Israel’s government what is in its interests, the Assads have long been seen as Public Enemy Number One, and their present weakness represents the best opportunity in decades.
Indeed, the ultimate goal in the strategy laid out in the infamous 1996 “Clean Break” paper prepared by prominent neo-conservatives for Netanyahu on the eve of his first term as prime minister was Syria’s destabilization. The overthrow of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein – for which the paper was best known – was simply one step toward that aim.
During the 2006 war with Hezbollah, neo-conservatives encouraged Israel to expand its military campaign into Syria, and, more than any other identifiable political faction, they have called consistently for Washington to provide material and military assistance – as former Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz did in a long column in the Wall Street Journal did this week – to the opposition for many months.
Jim Lobe’s blog on US foreign policy can be read at www.lobelog.com.
How Chinese spies used Facebook to steal Nato chiefs’ details
NATO’S most senior commander was at the centre of a major security alert when a series of his colleagues fell for a fake Facebook account opened in his name – apparently by Chinese spies.
March 10, 2012
by Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor,, in Washington DC
Telegraph/UK
Senior British military officers and Ministry of Defence officials are understood to have been among those who accepted “friend requests” from the bogus account for American Admiral James Stavridis.
They thought they had become genuine friends of Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander – but instead every personal detail on Facebook, including private email addresses, phone numbers and pictures were able to be harvested.
Nato officials are reluctant to say publicly wo was behind the attack. But the Sunday Telegraph has learned that in classified briefings, military officers and diplomats were told the evidence pointed to “state-sponsored individuals in China”.
Although they are unlikely to have found any genuine military secrets from the Facebook accounts they accessed , the incident is highly embarrassing.
In the wake of it Nato has advised senior officers and officials to open their own social networking pages to prevent a repeat of the security breach.
Admiral Stirvis – who was in charge of operations in Libya to bring about the end of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime – now has an official Facebook site while the bogus one has been permanently deleted from the internet.
But it opened up a treasure trove of personal information to the people behind the fake.
As well as their names, people routinely put personal email addresses, dates of birth, clues about their home address and personal and family pictures online. Some even state their current location, and messages on a page’s “wall” can reveal huge amounts about their beliefs and state of mind.
Although it is not known how much information was harvested, foreign intelligence agencies would be delighted to have such huge amounts of information which can be used to produce detailed profiles of potential targets for espionage or even blackmail.
Senior Nato staff were warned about the fake account late last year and made representations to Facebook.
It is understood that Facebook uses very sophisticated techniques to identify bogus accounts which, it says, have very different footprints to genuine Facebook users.
A spokesman said: “After the profile was reported to us, it was taken down as soon as we were notified and investigated the issue.”
Last night officials at SHAPE, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, reluctantly confirmed that its commander had been targeted.
They refused to be drawn on the origin of the security breach although other senior security sources confirmed that it had been traced to China.
A spokesman for SHAPE said: “This type of compromising attempts are called “Social Engeneering” and has nothing to do with “hacking” or “espionage”.
“Discussions/chats/postings on Facebook are of course only about unclassified topics.”
A NATO official added: “There have been several fake supreme allied commander pages. Facebook has cooperated in taking them down. We are not aware that they are Chinese.
“The most important thing is for Facebook to get rid of them. First and foremost we want to make sure that the public is not being misinformed. Social media played a crucial role in the Libya campaign last year.
“It reflected the groundswell of public opposition, but also we received a huge amount of information from social media in terms of locating Libyan regime forces. It was a real eye-opener. That is why it is important the pubic has trust in our social media.”
The so-called “spear fishing” exercise is the latest tactic in the wide ranging use of the internet to spy on key Western figures and to steal their secrets.
Fears centre on the espionage operation of Chinese intelligence agencies – which are targeting not just military secrets but every aspect of western life.
Among the items stolen are said to be the secrets of stealth aircraft, submarine technology, the space programme and solar energy.
British institutions are equally vulnerable including Chinese hackers successful getting access to House of Commons secure computer network.
Shawn Henry, the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of targeting cyber crime said: “We see thousands of breaches every month across all industry and retail, infrastructure and across all sectors.
“We know that the capabilities of foreign states are substantial and we know the type of information that they are targeting.”
The state-sponsored attacks are aimed at stealing information to give them an economic, political and military advantage.
Some hawkish figures in the US also fear that a hostile country or terror group might launch a “cyber war” against them attempting to attack and destroy military and civil infrastructure using viruses or other electronic weapons. However most experts think this is highly unlikely.
It is similar to the so-called “Night Dragon” attacks which targeted executives of some of the world biggest oil and gas companies.
The names of the firms involved have not been disclosed. Their reluctance is widespread as companies fear disclosure will damage customer confidence in them and it their share price.
The attacks infiltrated the energy companies computer system and looked for how the firms operated.
The attackers targeted the Western firms’ public websites and specific individuals using Facebook and other social networking sites to learn about them first, and then trying to dupe them into revealing their log in names and passwords.
The hackers were traced to China, to Beijing and investigators found the attacks only happened on week days between 9am and 5pm local time suggesting they were working at an office or a government facility.
Security expert Dmitri Alperovich, who helped uncover the “Night Dragon” breach, says Western businesses and Government are all routinely being targeted.
He said: “They will know your strategy, your price list, everything to undercut and beat you. The Chinese are using every trick in the book
“They stole emails between executives about high level negotiations. They are stealing their negotiation playbook and then they outbid them.If they know your strategy they can’t lose.”
Last year an executive at a key US defence firm, RSA, opened a personal email with the subject line “2011 Recruitment Plan” and clicked on the attached Excel spreadsheet.
The attachment contained a virus, apparently engineered by the Chinese, which opened up RSA’s system and allowed access to all its secrets, including its work for the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security(DHS).
Such is concern over the cyber-attacks that the DHS now sees it as a key priority along with tackling terrorism.
Bruce McConnell, its director of cyber security said: “The internet is civilian space. It is a marketplace. Like the market in Beirut in the ’70s, it will sometimes be a battleground.”
He likened his department’s job to attempts to co-ordinate the civilian response to a hurricane.
But “unlike in a hurricane, we are responding to incidents every day,” he added.
Federal Highway Surveillance
A joint Pentagon/Department of Transportation plan to conduct a permanent surveillance of all motor vehicles using the Federal Highway System is code named ARGUS. It was initially a part of an overall public surveillance program instituted and organized by Admiral Poindexter, convicted of various criminal acts as the result of the Iran-Contra affair and then brought back to government service by the Bush Administration. Following public disclosure of Poindexter’s manic attempts to pry into all aspects of American life and his subsequent public departure from government service (he is still so employed but as a “private consultant” and not subject to public scrutiny) many of his plans were officially scrapped. ARGUS, however, is still valid and still being developed.
This Orwellian nonsense consists of having unmanned video cameras installed over all Federal highways and toll roads. These cameras work 24/7 to video all passing vehicles, trucks, private cars and busses. The information is passed to a central data bank and entered therein. This is expected to show on request of any authorized law enforcement agency to include private investigative and credit agencies licensed to work with Federal law enforcement information on any user of the road systems under surveillance. Provision will be made, according to the operating plans, to notify local law enforcement immediately if any driver attempts to obscure their license plate number and instructs them to at once to “apprehend and identify” the vehicle or vehicles involved.
The only problem with implementing this ambitious program is its cost: $5 billion over a three year period.
The report estimates that this program can easily be installed and running on a nationwide basis within two years from its commencement.
It also will be a Federal crime to attempt to damage or in any way interfere with these surveillance devices.
FDR’S Jewish Ancestors
March 10, 2012
by Rabbi Joel Timmermann
President Franklin Roosevelt’s terrible hatred of Adolf Hitler and, in fact, all Germans does not stem from an alleged love of democracy but lies in his ethnic background.
The American Roosevelt family can clearly trace their roots in this country to one Claes Martenzsen von Rosenvelt (“of the rose field”) who came to New Amsterdam from Holland in 1649 and died in 1658. The family had originally come from Germany where the name was ‘Rosenfeld’ and they immigrated to Haarlem, Holland in the late 16th century due to an outbreak of anti-Semitism in their native Germany. This is clearly shown by perusal of the genealogy chart as produced by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., under direction of Dr. H.H. Laughlin, per an Associted Press. Article of March 7, 1934, , a similar chart was published by the Washington, D.C., Star, of February 29, 1936. Even a hasty perusal of the document convinces one as to President Roosevelt’s Jewish ancestry. From the viewpoint of eugenics, it explains his natural bent toward radicalism and his intense personal hatred of Adolf Hitler and all things German. It shows why he gbve hundreds of Jewish so-called Liberals, Socialists and Communists powerful positions in the national government.
The New York Times of March 14, 1935, quotes the President as saying: “In the distant past my ancestors may have been Jews. All I know about the origin of the Roosevelt family is that they are apparently descended from Claes Martenszen van Roosevelt, who came from Holland.” Additional information regarding the nationality of the Roosevelt family, was given by Chase S. Osborn, early in 1934, at St. Petersburg, Florida. Mr. Osborn was formerly Governor of Michigan. The leading newspaper of the city (The Times) carried the following report after the interview: “Although a Republican, the former Governor has a sincere regard for President Roosevelt and his policies. He referred to the ‘Jewish ancestry’ of the President, explaining how he is a descendant of the Rossocampo family expelled from Spain in 1620. Seeking safety in Germany, Holland and other countries, members of the family, he said, changed their name to Rosenberg, Rosenbaum, Rosenblum, Rosenvelt and Rosenthal. The Roosenvelts in North Holland finally became Roosevelt, soon becoming apostates with the first generation and others following suit until, in the fourth generation, a little storekeeper by the name of Jacobus Roosevelt was the only one who remained true to His Jewish Faith. It is because of this Jewish ancestry, former Governor Osborn said, that President Roosevelt has the trend of economic safety (?) in his veins.”
In the 1938 “World Almanac” under the heading “Biographies of U.S. Presidents and Their Wives,” page 237, appears: “Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the son of James Roosevelt, a direct descendant of Claes Martenzen van Rosenvelt, who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1649 and married Jannetje Samuels.” , It should be noted that Amsterdam was a strongly Jewish population center, and that many Jews had emigrated from there to New Amsterdam, later and under British control, New York.
The following is from “The House of Roosevelt” by Paul Haber, 1936 edition “Claes Rosenvelt entered the cloth business in New York, and was married in 1682. He accumulated a fortune. He then changed his name to Nicholas Rosenvelt. Of his four sons, Isaac died young, Nicholas married Sarah Solomons. Jacobus married Catherina Hardenburg. The Roosevelts were not a fighting but a peace-loving people, devoted to trade. Isaac became a capitalist. He founded the Bank of New York in 1790.”
The American Freedom Magazine of Los Angeles, California, April, 1938, issue, stated: “In an address to the National Convention of the D.A.R., President F.D. Roosevelt said that he too was of revolutionary ancestry. But not a Roosevelt was in the American Army. They were Tories, busy entertaining British officers. The first Roosevelt came to America in 1649. His name was Claes Rosenfelt. He was a jew. Nicholas the son of Claes, was the ancestor of both Franklin and Theodore. He married a JewishgGirl named Kunst in 1682. Nicholas had a son named Jacobus Rosenfelt. In the family tree there are 351 persons bearing biblical names of the Tribe of Israel. From the Corvallis Gazette-Times, of Corvallis, Oregon.
“The President’s father married Sarah Delano; and it become clear. Schmalix (genealogist) writes: ‘In the seventh generation we see the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as being of Jewish descent.
The Delanos are descendants of a long-established and well-known Spanish Jewish family; commonly spelt Dilano, Dilan, or Dillano. The Jew Delano drafted an agreement with the West Indies Co., in 1657 regarding the colonization of the island of Curacao. About this the directors of the West Indies Co., had correspondence with the Governor of New Holland. FDR’S maternal grandfather was a well-known opium smuggler during the latter part of the nineteenth century and their economic position was greatly enriched by the sale of opium to various dealers.
FDR received kosher calendars, bogus checks guaranteeing him “365 days of happiness”, trees planted in his name in Eretz (now Israel) from children of the Jewish Sanatarium for Chronic Diseases in Brooklyn, blessings from Rabbi Stephen Wise (one of the most active Zionists in America), and even flattering poetry by none other than Albert Einstein. A more recent analysis of the inner workings of the State Department during the Roosevelt Administration by Irwin F. Gellman provides many insights in examining the helm of the ship of state during FDR’s long tenure as President. Sitting atop the pyramid in the State Department was Cordell Hull. Gellman concludes that while Hull was not himself an anti-Semite, as Secretary of State he did little to assist German Jews in their flight from Nazism. Hull, a deliberate if not slow-paced administrator, did not react with alarm to the increasingly hostile warnings issued by Hitler against the German Jews. Gellman notes that German anti-Semitism was not a new phenomenon in the 1930s: German attempts to blame its own Jewish citizens for economic and political troubles had been heard and tried without major success many times in German history, and Hull knew it. By 1936 the most visible Zionist in America, Rabbi Stephen Wise, asked Hull to put pressure on Great Britain to allow continued immigration into Palestine. Although Hull spoke with Wise that summer, nothing came of the talks, and no real pressure was brought to bear on the British. Gellman concludes that Hull’s reticence to become personally involved in Jewish affairs stemmed from his fear that public advocacy for the Jews (so-called philo-Semitism) would damage his future Presidential ambitions.
Complicating this fact, concludes Gellman, was the religious heritage of Hull’s wife, Frances Hull, a descendent on her father’s side of Austrian Jews. Hull feared that his wife’s Jewish heritage would cause even more significant political difficulties. Hull was keenly aware of his portrayal in printed materials being distributed nationally. For example, Hull was infuriated with the August, 1936 edition of the American Bulletin, which was entitled “Cordell Hull–Slave of Morgan and Jews.” Hull also was cautious about a high profile account appearing in his friend Drew Pearson’s nationally syndicated newspaper column praising Hull for summoning the German ambassador into his office to protest Germany’s treatment of its Jewish population
Lowenstein concludes much of the indecision evidenced by the Roosevelt Administration, as late as 1944, was primarily a product of negative American public opinion concerning the European Jews. Rosenfeld, citing a 1939 poll revealing that 42 percent of Americans believed that hostility towards the Jews resulted from unsavory Jewish characteristics themselves, only reinforces the conclusion that many Americans had a perception problem concerning the desperate plight of the Jews during this period. Lowenstein focuses the historical analysis less on the mood of the American public than the inconsistent advice FDR received by his advisers and refugee advocates. Lowenstein wonders whether a more united response by refugee advocates might have caused a stronger response by both the Administration and the American public
Count Jerzy Potocki, Poland’s Ambassador to the United States, was a man of strong opinions, but was also very observant and very well connected in the Washington diplomatic circles. He wrote many reports to the Foreign Minister in Warsaw and four of them are reproduced here because they show a European diplomat’s view of Roosevelt’s foreign policy, or rather his lack of a rational and coherent one. These reports are not in chronological order, but are set forth in a more narrative sense. The first report here is under date of January 12, 1939 and is a discussion of Potocki’s view of Jewish influence on Roosevelt and its impact on his policies.
To The Foreign Minister in Warsaw:
Public opinion in America nowadays expresses itself in an increasing hatred of Fascism, Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with National Socialism. Above all, propaganda here is entirely in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100 percent of the radio, the films and the daily and periodical press. Although this propaganda is extremely coarse and is designed to present Germany as blackly as possible, when bearing American public ignorance in mind, their propaganda is so effective that people here have no real knowledge of the true state of affairs in Europe.
At the present time, most Americans are taught to believe that Chancellor Hitler and National Socialism are the greatest evil and the greatest peril threatening the world. The situation here provides an excellent program for public speakers of all kinds, among whom are many refugees from Germany and Czechoslovakia who with much effort and many patently false accounts, incite the American public. These speakers praise American liberty which they repeatedly contrast with totalitarian states.
It is interesting to observe that in this carefully thought-out campaign, which is primarily conducted against National Socialism, no reference at all is made to Soviet Russia. If that country is mentioned, it is referred to in a friendly manner and people are given the impression that Soviet Russia is part of the democratic group of nations. Thanks to astute propaganda, public sympathy in the United States is entirely on the side of Communist Spain. Side by side with this pro-Communist propaganda, an artificial war panic is created, The American people are told that peace in Europe is hanging only by a slim thread and that war is inevitable. No effort is spared to impress upon the American mind that in the event of a world war, the United States must take an active part in a struggle for “freedom and democracy.” President Roosevelt was the first in the field to give expression to this hatred of Fascism. He had a two-fold purpose in mind: firstly, he wanted to divert American public opinion from difficult and complicated domestic problems, especially the problem of the struggle between capital and labor. Secondly, by creating a war-panic and inventing rumors about threats to Europe, he wanted to induce Americans to endorse his huge program of armaments, a program which far exceeds the United States defense requirements.
Regarding the first point, it must be said that the internal situation here on the labor front is growing steadily worse. The unemployed today already number twelve million. Federal and state expenditures are increasing daily. Only these huge sums, running into billions, which the US treasury expends for emergency labor projects, are keeping a certain amount of peace in the country. Thus far only the usual strikes and local unrest have taken place. As to how long this artificial governmental aid can be kept up is difficult to predict at present. The unhappiness and growing indignation of public opinion coupled with the serious conflict between private enterprise and the enormous trusts on one hand and with a radicalized labor movement on the other, have made many enemies for Roosevelt and are no doubt causing him many sleepless nights.
As to the second point, I can only say that President Roosevelt is a skillful expert in domestic politics and a connoisseur of the American mentality and he has effectively turned public attention away from internal domestic problems and focused it on foreign policy. His means of achieving this effective distraction was simple. He needed, on the one hand, to highlight a fictional war menace threatening the world because of Chancellor Hitler, and on the other hand, to create a specter of war and invasion by speaking ominously about an attack of the totalitarian states on the United States. The Munich pact came to President Roosevelt as a godsend. He described it as the capitulation of France and England to growing and aggressive German militarism. As was said here: Hitler compelled Chamberlain at pistol point. Hence, France and England had no choice, but to back down and were compelled to conclude a shameful peace.
Furthermore, the brutal treatment meted out to the Jews in Germany, as well as the problem of the large number of Jewish and anti-German refugees flooding this country are both factors which intensify the existing hatred of everything connected with German National Socialism. In this campaign of hatred, individual Jewish intellectuals such as Bernard Baruch, Lehman, the Governor of New York State, Felix Frankfurter, the newly appointed Supreme Court Judge, Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury and other well-known personal friends have taken a prominent part in this campaign of hatred. All of them want the President to become the protagonist of human liberty, religious freedom and the right of free speech and be the man who, in the future, will punish trouble-mongers, especially those who are not liked by Jews. This particular group of people, who are all in highly placed official American positions and who are desirous of being representatives of “true Americanism” and seen as “Champions of Democracy” are, in point of fact, linked with international Jewry by ties incapable of being torn asunder. For this Jewish international, so intimately concerned with the interests of its own race, President Roosevelt’s “ideal” role as a champion of human rights was indeed a godsend, In this way they are not only able to establish a dangerous center of hatred and enmity in this hemisphere, but name also succeeded in dividing the world into two warlike camps. The whole problem is being worked out in a most mysterious manner. Roosevelt has been given the power to enable him to energize American foreign policy and at the same time create huge reserves in armaments for a future war which the Jews are deliberately heading for. With regards to domestic policy, it is extremely convenient to divert public attention from anti-Semitism which is on the increase in the United States, by talking about the necessity of defending religious faith and individual liberty against the assault of Fascism.
/s/ Jerzy Potocki,
Ambassador of the Republic of Poland
Regicide: The Official Assassination of JFK
by Gregory Douglas
REGICIDE — THE OFFICIAL ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY,
Military Magazine & History Channel Review
by Gregory Douglas (Monte Sano Media, 2002; 224 pgs.; $19.95 — ISBN 1591482976).
“Your first reaction may be the same as mine — an addition to the several dozen books already written, struggling with the obvious fiction of the Warren Report! This is not the case, however. You should notice the word “Official” in the sub-title. While working on his book “Gestapo Chief,” the biography of Heinrich Muller, Gregory Douglas became acquainted, and then good friends, with Robert T. Crowley, former Assistant Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations of the CIA. Crowley, or “Crow” as he was known within the CIA, had been a close associate and supervisor of Muller when he was brought into the CIA following WWII.
After his retirement and increasing age with an approaching chest operation where cancer was suspected, Crowley turned over his files to the author, Gregory Douglas, with the understanding that they were not to be opened, or used until after his death. On Tuesday, 10 October 2000, on page 6, the Washington Post reported the death of “Robert Trumbull Crowley, 76, a senior CIA official…”
Douglas was now free to use the Crowley papers. This astounding book is the result: “The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy”! To a major extent it is the reproduction of much of Robert T. Crowley’s files in the typewritten print of those files, with Crowley’s underscoring and emphasis on them, along with the explanations by Gregory Douglas. The book is so astounding that many may find themselves questioning the authenticity of even this original file material as I did. Therefore I refer you to two other sources:
1) The New York Times of 3 October 1963 editorial page (50 days previous to the assassination of JFK) carried a column by the well-known journalist Arthur Krock, “The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam” in which he described the CIA in Viet-Nam refusing to carry out orders from the President delivered to them by Ambassador Lodge. In closing this column Krock says, “If the United States ever experiences an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon.”
2) In 1973 Col L. Fletcher Prouty, USAF (Ret), after retirement from nine years as the liaison officer for the Pentagon with the CIA, wrote a book, “The Secret Team — The CIA and its Allies in control of the United States and the World.”
These two items by independent authors overlap and support what you will find in this book. It was the compatibility of what Arthur Krock and Fletcher Prouty, independent authors, had written that gave me assurance that I was reading authentic documents.
In the review of CIA “Operation Zipper” in this book you will see CIA agents James J. Angleton and Robert T. Crowley planning the assassination of the president, beginning in early March of 1963. Before the end of March, according to the documents, J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, Lyndon B. Johnson, Vice President, and General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been brought into the plan along with the Chicago Mafia and Israeli Mossad. The Chicago Mafia’s recruitment of the Corsican Mafia assassins in Marseille, France, alerted French Intelligence that a political assassination was planned in the U.S. and they alerted the U.S. Embassy, who apparently alerted no one. LBJ was concerned that he was also targeted and had to be assured by J. Edgar Hoover that he was not a target. It seems clear Lee Harvey Oswald was strictly the “patsy” he claimed to be.
Why and how did the CIA persuade so many high government officials to join them in a coup to overthrow the elected U.S. government? It is all here! Crowley was convinced the “Zipper” project was in the best interest of the country! You will find it helpful to review your history of the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban missile crisis, which brought about a fatal fracture of trust between the President and his intelligence agency! Also the CIA had discovered that via his brother, Robert Kennedy, and the senior KGB agent in the Washington USSR Embassy, the President had established a private line of communication with Nikita Khrushchev which the CIA considered treasonous.
Where JFK had planned to reduce our commitments and involvement in Viet-Nam, LBJ engineered the Gulf of Tonkin incident and expanded them. JFK was strongly opposing the Israeli development of nuclear weapons — LBJ was complacent and ignored these developments.
Frank Turberville, Jr.
Milton, NC
WARNING NOTICE – SENSITIVE SOURCES AND METHODS INVOLVED. PARAPHRASE NOT REQUIRED EXCEPT PRIOR TO CATEGORY B ENCRYPTION — PHYSICALLY REMOVE ALL INTERNAL REFERENCES BY DATE-TIME GROUP PRIOR TO DECLASSIFICATION — NO UNCLASSIFIED REFERENCE IF THE DATE-TIME GROUP IS QUOTED
Spies and ex-spies are required by terms of employment and training to lie, deceive, betray, commit crimes, and keep it secret. If they cannot convincingly lie and break laws without getting caught under all kinds of conditions as taught and tested in the US at the Farm, they will not be hired. They lie to families and friends, to everybody not in spyworld and often in spyworld too as a test and as a duty. They are experts at appearing to be what they are not.
It is a common spy tradecraft to claim to be an ex-spy or ex-agent, aggrieved, ready to spill secrets, their managers feigning offense, blessing the spew by invoking national security threats, pretending the miscreant is a rogue.
No spy or ex-spy ever tells the full story, only offers enticing tales that mesmerize the gullible and attempts to outwit accomplished doubters, whether other spies, agents, journalists, oversight committees, investigative commissions or the public. None are ever free to tell all they know, and face severe penalties if not death for telling more selected secrets than allowed to lend credence to their deceptions. So come the orchestrated dissenters, scholars, novelists, confessors, professors, exposers of perfidy and anonymous leakers, dispensing plausible disinformation purpose-made.
That’s the deal spies and agents sign on to and cannot ever escape, and are told so at the time of engagement, not that many want out of the privileges such as that provided by the bountifully bloated US Intelligence Community Management Fund which bribes sealed lips, most assuredly for retirees and exes continuing to work their undercover stations.
Anybody who claims to be a spy or ex-spy is a person unable to tell the truth, and gets paid and pensioned for well-crafted accounts of what is not, what to fear, what to doubt, who to distrust. Analyze the Association For Intelligence Officers (AFIO), http://www.afio.org and numerous similar organizations around the planet for what they tell and what they conceal in open deception.
The pervasive lies of spyworld — officers, agents, contractors and overseers — undermine and corrupt culture, language, trust, law and government. It is the most criminal worldwide institution of the time. “
Regicide: The DIA Analysis
18. The Dallas trip had been in train since late July of 1963. Texas was considered to be a key state in the upcoming 1964 Presidential elections. It was the disqualification of over 100,000 Texas votes, in conjunction with the known fraudulent voting in Chicago in 1960 that gave President Kennedy and his associates a slim margin of victory.
19. The actual route of Kennedy’s drive through downtown Dallas was made known to the local press on Tuesday, November 19. The sharp right turn from Main St. onto Houston and then the equally sharp left turn onto Elm was the only way to get to the on ramp to the Stemmons Freeway. A traffic divider on Main St. precluded the motorcade from taking the direct route, from Main St. across Houston and thence right to the Stemmons Freeway exit.
20. Just after the President’s car passed the Texas Book Depository, a number of shots were fired. There were a total of three shots fired at the President. The first shot came from the right front, hitting him in the neck. This projectile did not exit the body. The immediate reaction by the President was to clutch at his neck and say, “I have been hit!” He was unable to move himself into any kind of a defensive posture because he was wearing a restrictive body brace.
21. The second shot came from above and behind the Presidential car, the bullet striking Texas Governor Connally in the upper right shoulder, passing through his chest and exiting sharply downwards into his left thigh.
22. The third, and fatal shot, was also fired at the President from the right front and from a position slightly above the car. This bullet, which was fired from a .223 weapon, struck the President above the right ear, passed through the right rear quadrant of his head and exited towards the left. Pieces of the President’s skull and a large quantity of brain matter was blasted out and to the left of the car. Much of this matter struck a Dallas police motorcycle outrider positioned to the left rear of the Presidential car.
23. Photographic evidence indicates that the driver, SA Greer, slowed down the vehicle when shots were heard, in direct contravention of standing Secret Service regulations.
24. Reports that the initial hit on the President came from above and behind are false and misleading. Given the position of the vehicle at the time of impact and the altitude of the alleged shooter, a bullet striking the back of the President’s neck would have exited sharply downward as did the projectile fired at Governor Connally purportedly from the same shooter located in the same area of the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository.
25. The projectile that killed the President was filled with mercury. When such a projectile enters a body, the sudden decrease in velocity causes the mercury to literally explode the shell. This type of projectile is designed to practically guarantee the death of the target and is a method in extensive use by European assassination teams.
26. The disappearance of Kennedy’s brain and related post mortem material from the U.S. National Archives was motivated by an official desire not to permit further testing which would certainly show the presence of mercury in the brain matter.
27. Official statements that the fatal shot was fired from above and behind are totally incorrect and intended to mislead. Such a shot would have blasted the brain and blood matter forward and not to the left rear. Also, photographic evidence indicates that after the fatal shot, the President was hurled towards his left, against his wife who was seated to his immediate left.
28. The so-called “magic bullet” theory, i.e., a relatively pristine, fired, Western Cartridge 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano projectile produced in evidence, is obviously an official attempt to justify its own thesis. This theory, that a projectile from above and behind struck the President in the upper back, swung up, exited his throat, gained altitude and then angled downwards through the body of Governor Connally, striking bone and passing through muscle mass and emerging in almost undamaged condition is a complete impossibility. The bullet in question was obtained by firing the alleged assassination weapon into a container of water.
29. Three other such projectiles were recovered in similar undamaged condition. One of these was produced for official inspection and was claimed to have been found on Governor Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital. As a goodly portion of the projectile was still in the Governor’s body (where much of it remained until his death some years later), this piece of purported evidence should be considered as nothing more than an official “plant.”
Author’s Comments
Almost all of the revisionist works on the Kennedy assassination deal with forensics. The main, and only, purpose for the existence of the Warren Commission was to firmly establish that a lone individual who had no accomplices had shot President Kennedy. Any evidence in existence at the time the commission sat that furthered this thesis was used; any evidence that would refute their thesis was ignored.
Oswald, the lone individual with no accomplices, had to have shot the President, and Governor Connally, with a surplus Italian Army 6.5-mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle equipped with a cheap telescopic sight. He had to have fired from the sixth floor of a building, down at a moving target and have fired three shots in a five-second period of time. The Carcano was a very clumsy bolt-action rifle. The turned-down bolt handle was difficult to manipulate and the field of vision of the scope was so small as to virtually render it useless against a moving target.[1]
Tests by numerous firearms experts were never able to duplicate either the rate of fire or the alleged accuracy of the weapon purported to have been the sniper’s only weapon.[2] While the muzzle velocity of the 6.5-mm round tip bullet was very low, nevertheless, if it hit a human being within a reasonable distance, it could inflict a fatal shot.
The “magic bullet” thesis is a piece of impossible nonsense that nevertheless was eagerly accepted and promulgated by the Warren Commission and, decades after the event, is still shrilly supported by those members of the media who have a vested interest in doing so. The nearly pristine bullet conveniently planted on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital could never have hit or passed into anything other than a container of water.